


(Let's give them) Something to talk about

by MemeKonGlee (MemeKonYA)



Category: Glee
Genre: Developing Relationship, Drinking & Talking, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Feelings, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Post-Season/Series 05, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 01:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15920490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemeKonYA/pseuds/MemeKonGlee
Summary: “I need you to—”“I heard you the first time,” Kurt interrupts, putting his fork and knife down on his plate and pushing his half-finished pancakes aside. “What I meant was: what thehell?”He points towards the neglected pancakes, trying to stall in the face of Kurt’s reaction.“Are you sure you don’t wanna finish that first?”The look in Kurt's eyes tells him in no uncertain terms thatno, he doesn't want to finish his pancakes, Jesus.And so Sebastian has no option but to take a deep breath in, exhale slowly through his mouth and just… get on with it, internally cringing at how unbelievably ridiculous it all sounds when he puts it in words, all out there for the world (and more importantly, Kurt fucking Hummel) to judge.It all boils down to: I fucked up and I'm too proud to deal with it the mature way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to Lynn for holding my hand while I wrote this (and for being an awesome person), and to Lex for the title inspiration!

The first time it happens it's pretty much down to Sebastian's tendency for impulsive behavior, and the fact that even though the couple of years that have passed since high school have somewhat mellowed him out, he's still an agitator at heart.

He's out with some acquaintances from one of his gen ed classes, at some bar that's not really his style—filled with the kind of artsy types that get on his nerves—, ready to take advantage of the happy hour before making up some excuse and bailing.

And then there's someone introducing a band, and Sebastian starts making plans to split even faster, because no amount of cheap beer is worth suffering through a whole set of fucking amateurs butchering whatever songs they’re making soulful renditions of.

But then, the host is stepping down from the stage, and up comes Kurt fucking Hummel.

And that's how it begins.

 

Kurt practically makes a beeline for him at the bar after he's done performing. He ignores him for the couple of minutes it takes him to flag the bartender down and order his drink.

Then he turns around and eyes him with mild interest. Sebastian returns the favor, cataloguing the way his clearly tailored slacks hug the curves of his thighs, the way the cut of his shirt calls attention to the width of Kurt’s shoulders, the rolled up sleeves that show off Kurt’s forearms— lean but defined, radiating strength, and the topmost buttons that are undone, suggesting a little collarbone. And then the little scarf that’s completing the look.

Sebastian takes his time staring, and when he’s done appreciating the wonders time has done for Kurt, he locks gazes with him.

Kurt seems faintly amused.

“I didn’t know this was an NYU haunt.”

“I’m flattered that you’re keeping tabs on me, Hummel.” Sebastian takes a sip of his beer and then nods towards the empty stage. “Nice set. Tall, dark, and stubbly was particularly delectable. You doing him?”

“Classy. No. And no, I’m not ‘keeping tabs’ on you either, I just happen to be surrounded by incurable gossips.” The bartender gets back to Kurt with his drink, and he receives it with a thankful smile that the guy responds to with a dazzling one of his own that Kurt seems entirely unaffected by, much to the guy’s chagrin. “I could try to put a word in for you with Elliott if you want. He might even lower his standards and go for it after a beer or two, if he gets bored.”

“Ouch.” He smirks, and lifts his half-empty bottle at Kurt in a mock toast. “To that stick that’s still firmly lodged in your ass.”

There’s a second there where Kurt’s eyes flash, and Sebastian thinks he’ll end up with a face full of his Long Island Iced Tea. 

The second comes and goes, however, and all Kurt does is raise an eyebrow at him.

“To all the things that have been in your ass too, I guess.”

He bursts out into startled laughter at the crassness of the comment, and when he catches sight of Kurt, he’s smirking, twirling the ice cubes in his drink around with his straw.

When their eyes meet after Sebastian’s gotten his laughter under control, Kurt mock toasts him and takes a long, deliberate sip.

He is called over to a table, then, by tall and handsome, and Sebastian watches him walk away, thinking that maybe he would’ve gotten along with this Kurt back in high school; that maybe they could’ve been something akin to friends if they’d met under different circumstances.

_… Or maybe we would’ve butted heads anyway_ , he thinks, smirking as Kurt sits between his bandmates, cracking an honest, sugar sweet smile as soon as he’s there. 

_And maybe we would’ve eventually gotten around to working out our frustrations in some way other than dancing and singing._

 

He can hear them as he's rounding the corner towards the restrooms, ready to take a leak before calling it a night. Kurt's voice is as distinctive as it's ever been, and as Sebastian draws nearer, he can tell he's not exactly thrilled by the dry quality to it. 

“—not interested.”

“Are you sure, sweetheart? I can really make it worth your while.”

“He’s sure,” Sebastian replies once they come into view, Kurt leaning against a wall, arms crossed over his chest, lips pursed in a moue of distaste, Pushy McPusherson leaning into his space with a hand pressed next to Kurt's shoulder, like some kind of fiendish cartoon Casanova. 

When the guy turns to face Sebastian, he recognizes him as the bartender. 

“And you are…?”

“His boyfriend. And word to the wise? You shouldn't be accosting your customers on the clock, _sweetheart_. I doubt that's what you're getting paid for.” 

The sneer on the guy’s face makes him go from plain and forgettable to downright ugly, the glinting ring on his lip looking tacky and cheap on him as it catches briefly on his teeth, his fake tan and floppy bleached blond hair doing him no favors. 

Sebastian’s readying himself for at least some verbal sparring, but the guy just glares at him for a second or two, and then takes off, a whirlwind of insulted Jersey Shore reject. 

Kurt interrupts his silent gloating by clearing his throat. When Sebastian looks back at him, little has changed in his posture; there’s the way he’s still leaning on the wall, his arms over his chest, the look on his face, almost bored.

“I didn't need you to save me, _boyfriend_.” There’s a tightness in the words, something defensive that’s dripping all over them. 

Sebastian’s familiar with the tone, has heard it from Kurt himself more than once, back when Sebastian was trying to get into his boyfriend’s pants, just because Kurt told him that he couldn’t, and he wasn’t good at taking no for an answer. It’s weirdly unsettling to have it directed at him this night, like this, because while Sebastian hasn’t exactly set out to make _friends_ with Kurt, he hasn’t been actively trying to piss him off, and so he just shrugs.

“I know,” He says, nonchalant, and mirrors Kurt’s posture, leaning against the opposite wall. “I just dislike the guy. He can't put a decent cocktail together to save his life, and the smell of his bleached hair makes me want to gag myself with a spoon.”

Kurt’s eyes narrow at him, and Sebastian has the distinct feeling that he’s being entirely evaluated, each part of him scrutinized, each thought inside of him plucked out to poke at. It’s eerie, but Sebastian hasn’t ever backed out of a challenge, and he doesn’t plan to start right now, just because Kurt Hummel has an unnerving way of dressing people down to their very intentions with nothing but his eyes. 

Whatever it is that Kurt’s looking for, he seems to find it, because his expression relaxes back to one of mild distaste, and he says, “He did have a truly tragic dye job. And he went overboard with the Triple sec on my drink.”

“And he was kind of an asshole,” Sebastian adds, because this feels like an olive branch, and Sebastian could use a few more allies in a city like New York.

“Yeah, well, at least you didn’t have to suffer his bad breath,” Kurt grouses, wrinkling his nose. 

Eventually, Kurt walks away, but when he does, he bids him goodbye, and Sebastian can tell that something between them has effectively shifted.

It makes him almost want to stay, want to see what he can glean from stealing glances at the table where Kurt is probably still sitting amidst his posse of drama kids, but his bladder reminds him of his original purpose, and once he’s done the deed and washing his hands, he decides that it might not be the best idea, staying just to creep on Kurt Hummel after they’ve established a tentative détente.

That doesn’t mean he can’t covertly stare a little on his way to the door, taking in the way that Kurt seems to have relaxed since his high school days, seems to have grown confident in a way that’s less bravado and more something that’s just there, quietly simmering; especially taking in the way he laughs at something tall and dark says, unrestrained. 

When he’s out, the city feels strange. 

Nearly the same, but charged.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time it happens, Sebastian is at an NYU party in some nondescript house, on his third solo cup, debating the best course of action to ditch a guy that's been talking his ear off about his Economic Principles professor for the past ten minutes. 

Sebastian stopped actively listening about five minutes ago, thinking that even though the guy’s not the best conversationalist around, the broad shoulders under that hoodie were worth playing the part of the devoted listener for a little while longer.

He's rethinking the choice he made just as someone's hand curls around his bicep.

“There you are, babe! Didn't you get my text? I've been looking for you for the past five minutes or so— oh, sorry, am I interrupting?”

Kurt's eyes widen as he looks at Hoodie, looking perfectly apologetic even as he plasters himself to Sebastian's side, his long fingers still grasping at him, proprietary.

Hoodie blinks at them owlishly, and Sebastian can see him blush even under the shitty overhead lights of the crowded hall they're standing in. 

“No, I just, uh—”

And then he just gestures behind himself and mumbles something that might've been 'I'm getting another drink’ in some other universe where vowels don't exist.

“Wow,” Kurt drawls as he watches Hoodie scurry away, letting go of him. His mask of sweet devotion slipping away until there’s only an arched eyebrow left in its place. “You sure don't pick them for their smarts, do you?”

Sebastian shrugs.

“I don't really need them to make a dissertation in bed. I’m fine with ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.”

Kurt rolls his eyes.

“Of course.” 

There’s silence between them then, surrounded by the noise of the partygoers around them and the music blasting from the strategically placed speakers.

Finally, Kurt says, “Well, I guess we’re even now.”

And then there’s a second or two of lingering, before he leaves, steps sure and measured. 

And Sebastian—without knowing exactly why at the time— watches him go, gut tight as he trails his slim figure until it’s swallowed by the throng.

 

It isn’t until he’s back at his apartment in the early morning, pleasantly tipsy and loose, that it occurs to him to wonder how exactly Kurt could tell that he wanted out of that situation. Sebastian knows he’s honed his politely interested face to perfection, forged through the fires of endless luncheons and fundraising dinners.

Eventually, he just accepts the fact that it’s probably just a Kurt Hummel thing, an uncanny ability to see through people’s bullshit, and he falls asleep with the imprint of Kurt’s slate gray eyes in his mind, observant and wide, full of a spark that he used to hate and now— well, now he doesn’t. 

 

The third time is surrounded by a red haze of fury.

Sebastian ends up in the vicinity of the Spotlight Diner because Cheyenne—one of the girls from the crew he’s fallen in with (most of them going into pre-med with him)— is apparently a musical theater enthusiast and she seems to be completely into the idea of having waitstaff singing as they eat their lunch, and Sebastian is basically the only one within their group who hadn’t groaned at the mere idea, so Cheyenne had taken that as an agreement from him to go with her. 

He’d weighed his options then, and figured out that it would probably be easier to go along, paste a smile and pretend to be thoroughly entertained and like he’s having the time of his life, than it would be to try and beg off without sounding like a complete asshole and effectively dashing his chances to keep borrowing her notes for Principles of Biology until the end of the semester.

That’s what he’s doing when he sees it, walking down Broadway avenue with Cheyenne in tow, a couple of blocks away from the diner, talking about the hot TA from a class they share that’s also just obnoxiously incompetent.

‘It’ is the sight of Kurt Hummel, just a feet or so away from them, whirling around to face the retreating back of some random guy, naked wrath in his expression and every tense line of his body, practically spitting out, “Say that to my face, you cowardly little excuse for a man.”

The guy stops in his tracks, and Sebastian only notices he’s done the same when Cheyenne asks, worried, “What’s wrong?”

He doesn’t reply, eyes narrowed and fixed on The Guy, who is now turning around to face Kurt. He notices he’s holding his breath only when the guy’s spitting back a slur, loud enough for a couple of passersby to hear him and he’s suddenly letting it out in an angry hiss. Cheyenne gasps.

Kurt’s sneer is familiar, but it’s also so much uglier than he’s ever seen it before, filled with so much rage that Sebastian’s expecting him to start vibrating in place from the effort of containing it. The guy is an inch or so taller than him, and he’s attempting to tower over Kurt, to make him cower.

_Well, you got another thing coming, you fucker_ , he thinks, _there’s no earthly way Kurt fucking Hummel will be intimidated by the likes of you._

And he’s right, of course he’s right; Kurt stands tall and proud, and snarls something about The Guy being a sad, sad reminder to society about the importance of contraceptives—which makes Sebastian snort, even through the adrenaline—, and for a second he’s sure The Guy will just leave it at that, clearly not being the kind of person who could ever survive a battle of the wits with Kurt Hummel, and then he sees it: the way The Guy’s fists clench, the way he goes tense like a string.

Sebastian wasn’t one of the guys wasting his time in Dalton’s little Fight Club, but he’s still seen enough fights go down in his life to recognize the signs of someone getting ready to throw a punch. Apparently, Kurt can recognize them too, darting his eyes at The Guy’s fists and then squaring himself, as if bracing for impact, and just— Jesus Christ, he’s not about to just— 

Of course he is, who is he kidding. He’s Kurt fucking Hummel, and Sebastian’s never seen him back down from a challenge, he’s never— he’s— 

“I’m calling the cops if you don’t step away from my boyfriend right now,” he snaps, loud enough that it startles the few passersby that have gathered around Kurt and The Guy. 

He’s by Kurt’s side before he even realizes he’s moving, an arm wrapping itself around Kurt’s waist, the other clutching his phone tightly.

He can see the disgust in The Guy’s face, and it only stokes the fires of his fucking rage, back ramrod straight, face contorting into some ugly kind of expression; he’s sure The Guy won’t try his luck against the both of them, but Sebastian almost finds himself wishing he will, because breaking this guy’s nose would be the best thing to happen to him all week. 

Sadly, he’s right about The Guy, and watches as the fight drains out him, scowling at them until he turns around and takes off, apparently too pissed off for even the attempt at a parting shot.

The small crowd dissipates almost as soon as The Guy retreats, and Cheyenne is upon them almost as soon as that, a tiny storm of worried energy.

“Are you both okay?” She reaches out an arm towards Kurt, but appears to decide against it at the last minute, lowering it awkwardly again. Instead she starts fiddling with the buttons of her coat

Sebastian turns his face towards Kurt, then, and there’s just— there’s something in his face. Something miserable and awful. Now that he’s closer he can also spot slight dark circles under his eyes, can see the way he looks sharper, as if he’d lost weight (and he had none to spare in the first place). It’s unsettling. It’s unsettling to see Kurt Hummel like this, when all he’s ever known of him is unwavering determination, the spark in his eyes, the endless snark. Kurt Hummel can be damaged, he realizes—not by fucking random homophobes, but by whatever he’s got going on—, and the knowledge doesn’t sit well with him.

Kurt steps out of his embrace then, jostling Sebastian with the sudden violence of his move, and grits out, “I was doing fine on my own.”

Sebastian bites back a response, _you were going to let some nobody fucking punch you_ on the tip of his tongue. The last thing either of them needs right now is to get in a fight with each other, and Sebastian seems to momentarily be the more level-headed one of the two, so he’s taking the high road, for the first time in his life.

After a second or two, the anger seems to bleed out of Kurt, right along with the tension, leaving only slightly hunched shoulders and a weary gaze behind. 

“I’m sorry,” Kurt sighs, “I don’t know what— you were just being a decent person. Sorry.” He smiles ruefully at Cheyenne, adds, “I’m really sorry you had to witness that.”

Cheyenne just waves the hand that’s not fiddling with her buttons around.

Before the whole thing can become unbearably uncomfortable, Kurt sighs again, and says, “I need to go to work.”

Sebastian doesn’t know he’s going to ask the question until it comes out, “Where do you work?”

Cheyenne gives him a slightly puzzled look, but he just shrugs.

Kurt’s lips curl into a playful smile, and he tells Cheyenne, “Our relationship is complicated.” To Sebastian he says, “Spotlight Diner, a couple of blocks from here. As it is, I am—” He takes out his phone, unlocks it and winces. “—Five minutes late.”

Cheyenne lets out a noise that falls somewhere between a shriek and a gasp, and she’s suddenly latching onto Kurt’s side, whatever hesitation she’d felt before about reaching out to him gone, as she starts marching Kurt towards the diner, already drilling him about his job, and his aspirations, and whether he thinks all the revivals are allowing classics to become improved versions of themselves or just stifling new script writers and talents.

Kurt cranes his neck slightly to toss him a look that Sebastian interprets as _what is going on_? and Sebastian just shrugs, walking a few steps behind them.

_Better you than me_ , he mouths, and Kurt’s eyes narrow in mock-outrage. 


	3. Chapter 3

At some point he stops counting. Kurt and him seem to somehow run in often overlapping social circles, so they see each other a great deal more than Sebastian ever expected to see anyone from Ohio in a city as big as New York.

And they're running interference for each other as often as they're not, saving each other from stale conversations, pushy guys who won't take a hint; and this one memorable time, a sorority sister who seemed to be convinced her charms would give Sebastian at least a little bi curiosity. 

(Kurt had plopped onto his lap, like it was the most natural move for him to make, like he spent his days lounging there, and knew it was where he belonged.

That had been memorable enough on its own, because through their countless ruses—or their single long-running ruse, depending on how you saw things—, they'd never gone farther than a light brush of lips against a cheek and some hand holding. 

But Kurt had put an arm around Sebastian's neck, pressing them together more than it was probably acceptable even in the midst of drunken college students, and he'd smiled in an exaggeratedly vicious way, and said, “You're not trying to steal my man, right Sheryl? That's not befitting of a classy lady like you.”

Sheryl did much better than Hoodie, against Kurt's attention. She just tossed her wavy blonde hair behind her shoulder and let out a tinkling laugh.

“Of course not,” she'd said, but then she'd batted her eyes at them and added, “Although you can call me anytime, if you ever feel like getting your 3P on.”

Kurt had laughed himself, in turn, and said, almost sweetly, “Honey, we’re way too gay to ever take you up on that.”

And then he'd turned his attention back towards Sebastian, and after a second or two of silent conversation, he'd moved in to lay one on him.

One of Sebastian's hands had gone up to Kurt's face, almost as if his body instinctively wanted to keep him there, warm, soft lips pressed to his in a gentle kiss.

He'd heard Sheryl's laughter, again, but in all honesty, anything after that had only vaguely registered, and his memories going forth were mostly a blur, only jumbled thoughts and sensations as Kurt played the doting boyfriend for his captive audience of one.)

This is probably why when his mom calls him on a Saturday—like she does every week like clockwork— when he’s on his desk, attempting to get through an assigned reading for General Chemistry, a month or two after Kurt came back into his life and they started this unlikely non-relationship relationship of sorts, and starts going on about how grand-mère Jacqueline's been harping on her about Sebastian's perpetual singlehood, and how she's going to die without ever holding a great-grandchild, Sebastian distractedly tells her, “Well, I have a boyfriend now, so she can stop guilt tripping you into nagging at me.”

“Oh.” The shock in that one, diminutive syllable makes some childish part of him both rejoice and take offense, paradoxically. She gets her astonishment under control soon enough though, and she adds,“Congratulations are in order, then! I suppose we'll get to meet this mysterious boy when we come up there next month to visit?”

And that's how Sebastian's brain catches up to his mouth and he realizes he’s fucked.

And even though the situation is salvageable, with about a million excuses he could conjure up for why that can't happen, sorry, his brain is mostly looping the words 'stupid’ and 'fuck’ over and over.

So, instead of a well crafted excuse (or even a half-assed one), what comes out of his traitorous mouth is, “Yeah, I guess.”

 

After his mom says her goodbyes, a good twenty minutes later, Sebastian’s left staring at his phone screen until it goes dark. 

_Well, I did that_ , is the first coherent thought that isn’t just some nebulous sort of panic that he forms.

He lets himself stew for a couple of minutes; then, when he decides he’s beaten himself up enough for his slip, he starts thinking strategically.

He has a couple of choices here: he can come clean to his mom—and possibly face a stern talking to about lying (a stern talking to that he’s already gotten enough times to last him a lifetime); or even worse, have his mom be understanding and then pitying—, he can have a conveniently-timed fake break-up—which would probably set off his mom’s bullshit detector—, or he could try to rope Kurt into going along in a week long farce. 

He knows as soon as he’s done mentally ticking off his choices that he should just bite the bullet and come clean. It will be a pain in his ass, and his mom is probably going to verbally walk on eggshells for a while, because what kind of sad person resorts to lying to their mom about dating someone, _really_ , but it’s the least complicated of all his options.

—He also knows that it’s not what he’s going to go with, almost as soon as he realizes it’d be the least complicated option, though, because even years of a journey towards personal betterment or whatever haven’t made him someone he isn’t, and he’s still just that little bit too prideful, and he’s not really feeling up to weeks of conversations with his mom implying that maybe he’s just not ‘putting himself out there’, or whatever. 

And then he discards the conveniently-timed break-up just as quickly, because his mom’s bullshit detector has been as finely honed over years of dealing with teenaged Sebastian as Sebastian’s politely interested face. And so that’s just waiting to get caught out in a lie, and then it’s back to the pity and the subtle encouragement to just get out of his shell and find himself a man.

And so, by process of elimination, he knows just what he’s going to do. 

He melts into his desk chair and winds up staring at the ceiling for a couple of minutes, pushing himself with his toes to swivel softly side to side and sighs.

Maybe this will be a valuable lesson about fucking thinking before speaking.

(Or maybe he’ll keep on fucking that one up forever, who knows, jury’s still out on that one. He _is_ self-aware enough to know that he doesn’t always learn from his mistakes.)

 

Sebastian doesn’t really have Kurt’s contact information, is what dawns on him that night in bed, as he starts thinking about his gameplan. They never make arrangements to meet each other, they just— they just happen to run into each other again and again, like they’re still in Nowheresville, Ohio, with the one decent hangout spot. 

And so he’s left with two options: friend Kurt on Facebook, or show up to the one place he knows Kurt will be at. 

The corner of his mouth quirks up in a smile as he sets an alarm on his phone for the next morning, instantly knowing which one will be more entertaining, and more likely to get him his desired outcome.


	4. Chapter 4

“Hello, welcome to Spotlight, I’m— _Sebastian_?” Kurt’s face when he looks up from his little notepad is incredibly satisfying, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows, nothing practised in it.

“Huh, what are the odds?” He asks, affecting surprise. “I also happen to be called Sebastian.” 

Kurt’s eye-roll is probably entirely deserved, but Sebastian can see the minute twitch at the corner of his mouth that tells him that even though the comment was admittedly a poor attempt at wit, he still found it somewhat funny. 

That’s good, he needs Kurt in a good mood for this.

“So... When’s your break?” Kurt lifts an eyebrow at that, tapping his pen against his notepad.

“Is this a social call?” There’s something intrigued in his voice, and Sebastian counts it as a win. Piquing his curiosity is probably a good start to this.

Sebastian puts his forearms on the table and leans forward into them, hoping the smile on his face is charismatic enough to charm even Kurt Hummel. 

The lifted eyebrow makes another appearance, though, which probably means he failed. 

Finally, Sebastian sighs and spits out, low and fast, “Look, I need a... favor.”

Kurt, to his credit, doesn’t refuse to help him right on the spot or break out into a belly laugh. Which— he probably shouldn’t have expected him to, after the past couple of months, knowing what he knows about Kurt Hummel, but he’s a recuperating asshole who can’t help but expect others to treat him like he’s treated them, or would have treated them.

“I’m not doing anything illegal for you,” Kurt tells him then, in a deadpan voice.

“Noted. So, should I stick around here and wait for you to take your break? Maybe have a...” He checks the menu that was already on the table when he sat down, and when nothing sounds particularly appetizing, he says, “Coffee?”

Kurt’s lips curl into a ghost of a wry smile. 

“Twenty minutes,” he tells him. Then he writes something down in his notepad and adds, “And you’re getting some pancakes too, I had to skip breakfast today.”

It’s probably a fair price to pay for what he’s about to ask of him, so he just nods in agreement, and makes to reach for his laptop. Twenty minutes is probably enough to churn at least a couple hundred words for the essay he’s been procrastinating on. 

 

Kurt drops down into the chair opposite of him closer to forty minutes later, looking mildly irritated and half dead on his feet. 

When he notices Sebastian’s enquiring expression, he says, “One of the other waitresses quit this morning. She was asked to sing Memory one time too many. I took over her tables because our boss couldn’t get anyone else to cover her shift in such short notice. I’ve already sung Mr. Cellophane five times.”

Sebastian smirks, then, feeling devious, and Kurt narrows his eyes.

“If you want to stand a chance of me agreeing to whatever it is you need help with, Sebastian Smythe,” Kurt warns, before Sebastian can even open his mouth to say anything at all, “You’re letting that one go.”

Sebastian’s hands go up, as if to say _okay, sure, you call the shots_ , and then he slides the untouched pancakes across the table.

If there ever was a moment to suck up, he guesses, this is it. He’s gonna need every little bit of good will he can garner.

The smile Kurt directs at him when the pancakes are in front of him is one he’s never seen, transforming Kurt’s face into something guileless and full of uncomplicated joy. 

It makes his throat feel weirdly itchy, so he looks away and busies himself putting his stuff away.

“So,” Kurt starts after the first couple of bites, “A favor.”

“Right.” Sebastian runs out of distractions and decides that it’s time to face the music. “I need you to be my boyfriend.”

The way Kurt seemingly chokes on a bite of syrupy pancake is one of those sights that sixteen year old him would’ve probably been thrilled to witness— because, yes, he was that kind of asshole, it was Schadenfreude day every day, and Kurt was high enough on his shit list that it would’ve made the whole thing that tiniest little bit sweeter. 

Right now, though, with the recent developments between them? It’s just concerning. Kurt turns to a rather unattractive shade of red as he coughs into his hand for a couple of seconds, and Sebastian pushes the half empty glass he ordered about ten minutes into some fairly impressive bullshitting of the academic kind towards him, but Kurt doesn’t take it. Instead, he just coughs a couple more times, and then croaks out, “Pardon?”

Sebastian suppresses a grimace, and instead offers his most dazzling smile. Kurt remains unaffected, face still slightly red.

“I need you to—”

“I heard you the first time,” Kurt interrupts, putting his fork and knife down on his plate and pushing his half-finished pancakes aside. “What I meant was: what the _hell_?”

He points towards the neglected pancakes, trying to stall in the face of Kurt’s reaction.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna finish that first?”

The look in Kurt's eyes tells him in no uncertain terms that _no, he doesn't want to finish his pancakes, Jesus_.

And so Sebastian has no option but to take a deep breath in, exhale slowly through his mouth and just… get on with it, internally cringing at how unbelievably ridiculous it all sounds when he puts it in words, all out there for the world (and more importantly, Kurt fucking Hummel) to judge. 

It all boils down to: I fucked up and I'm too proud to deal with it the mature way.

If someone else were relying that to him? He'd probably burst out laughing in a most annoying and loud way, and then promptly proceed to completely revert to his sixteen year old self and mock whoever his unlucky interlocutor was to death, because some things are just worth accumulating a little bad karma over.

But it's Kurt Hummel in front of him, patron saint of being decent, and so what he gets is respectful silence while he gets through his tale of stupidity, even though it’s coupled with the kind of bemused expression that most people reserve for particularly dense characters in trashy movies that go on to win multiple Razzies, towards the end of it, with lips slightly parted and eyebrows lowered.

The bustle of the diner seems to swallow them for the couple of seconds while they just look at each other once Sebastian’s done talking, the chatter and the laughter, the clinking sounds of cutlery against plates, the faint tinkling from ice cubes in drinks, the tail end of a song Sebastian can’t recognize.

“The worst part of all this,” Kurt starts after the final notes of the song, tone positively droll, “is how entirely plausible it becomes once I factor in that it’s _you_ we’re talking about, the guy who thought it was a good idea to throw a slushie in Santana’s face, the guy who went along with the most harebrained scheme ever concocted to win a show choir competition.”

The urge to defend himself against Kurt’s remarks is as strong as it’s fucking useless. He knows Kurt is right, is the thing, he knows he makes fucking awful decisions sometimes, and goes along with some really stupid shit on occasion. 

That doesn’t make it any easier to suppress a scowl, or to rein in the vitriol in his voice when he next speaks, “So, are you helping me out or not?”

Kurt sighs, looking heavenwards for a couple of seconds, before his eyes come back to meet Sebastian’s—the natural daylight coming in through the windows making them slightly bluer—, with something resolute in them that does something funny to Sebastian’s insides— something funny that he attempts to quell immediately. 

“Okay.”

Sebastian frowns, momentarily thrown.

“Okay?”

Kurt shrugs and drags his pancakes back towards himself, picking up his fork and knife and neatly cutting a bite-sized piece. 

“Just like that?” Sebastian asks, still a little incredulous with how easy this turned out to be. He’d been prepared to cajole Kurt into this, had come up with about ten different strategies to get him on board (some of them nicer than others, admittedly), and now it feels as though they’ve gone wildly off-script, and he’s— floundering. 

Sebastian Smythe doesn’t do floundering.

Kurt goes through the last of his pancakes, seemingly unbothered by the surrounding air of awkwardness, cutting each morsel methodically, thoroughly chewing each one of them before swallowing. Sebastian blames his staring on the fact that he has no idea how to proceed.

When he’s finally done, Kurt places his fork (tines up) and knife (blade in) on the right side of his plate and Sebastian is instantly reminded of etiquette lessons from his childhood, when he would’ve rather been doing anything other than sitting at a table learning the proper way to hold his cutlery. Kurt was probably the kind of kid who would’ve loved that kind of stuff, thrived on it.

“I never thanked you for what you did that one time,” is what Kurt says, then, voice deceptively nonchalant. Sebastian can see how his eyes darken, though, can read the tension around his jaw.

Despite the ambiguity of the statement, Sebastian knows exactly what he’s referring to, and he knows it would be useless to pretend otherwise, so he just hums.

“I know you didn’t do it for the gratitude. Sometimes it’s— sometimes it’s hard to remember, but at the end of the day, you and I are on the same boat, at least when it comes to—”

“Being really fucking gay?” Sebastian offers, with an eyebrow raised.

Kurt’s lips twist into a somewhat brittle smile. Sebastian knows the sentiment is not really directed at him, but rather at the fucking disgrace of a world they happen to live in, so he offers a lopsided smile of his own in return. 

The silence between them turns companionable. Sebastian had noticed this trend a couple of run-ins back, how they’d started finding a certain ease with each other, even when they didn’t really share much, and spent as much time silently crowd-watching as they did pretending to be an item.

“My break’s over,” Kurt says a couple of minutes later, and he somehow looks honestly reluctant to just up and leave, even as he’s dragging his chair back and standing up. 

“Okay,” he replies, and then extends a hand, palm up, in Kurt’s direction. Kurt just stares at it in confusion. “We need each other’s contact information. As lovely as this fine establishment is, I’m not coming here every time we need to hash something out for our charade.”

Kurt snorts, but he retrieves his phone from his back pocket and hands it over anyway, after unlocking it.

The wallpaper is Kurt with who he recognizes as Rachel Berry and Mercedes Jones, one on each arm, as they stand on their tiptoes and lean in to press twin kisses on his cheeks. It’s incredibly cheesy, and exactly what he would’ve expected someone like Kurt Hummel’s wallpaper to be. It’s oddly reassuring. Amidst everything else, there’s something that is as Sebastian expects it to be, the world is still turning.

He sends himself a text ( _hello boyfriend ♥,_ just because he can imagine Kurt rolling his eyes and letting out a huff at it, pretending he isn’t amused by it when he reads it, later), locks back the phone, and hands it over. Their fingertips brush slightly when Kurt grabs it back, and there’s a moment where they both freeze at the contact, but it’s gone almost as soon as it comes, ignored by them both. 

Kurt goes back to doing his job, then, and Sebastian internally debates staying, for a couple of minutes, but ultimately decides that there’s really no good reason for that, and that he can work on his essay more comfortably from his apartment, or even the library, if he feels up to putting in some actual effort.


	5. Chapter 5

He sends the text a couple of days later, a simple _when are you free?_ as he’s lying down on his sofa, socked feet propped on the arm of it, the TV in front of him muted on a godawful reality show that Sebastian watches religiously.

Kurt replies about four minutes later, _Friday, 6pm_.

Sebastian runs through his schedule on Fridays, eyes trained on the ceiling. He has a study group at 5pm, but midterms aren’t for a couple more weeks, and he’s on top of all his assigned reading, so he can probably skip it without risking falling behind.

His thumb hovers for a little while over his screen, for some reason, feeling like he’s on the edge of something, about to fall down into the unknown. It’s really fucking ridiculous, so he just huffs and brings himself to type down his address and press send.

He lays down his phone on the coffee table, and goes back to his crappy reality show, refusing to let his mind fucking wander places it’s not supposed to go; places it’s not even supposed to want to go, in the first place.

 

“Of course your apartment’s in the Upper East Side,” is the first thing Kurt says when Sebastian gets the door that Friday, a handful of minutes early. 

Sebastian leans against the doorjamb, crossing his arms over his chest, smiling smugly.

“Jealous?”

Kurt hitches his fashionable little leather messenger bag up his shoulder. He crosses his arms back at Sebastian, with intent, and says, “Your neighbors look like knock-off versions of Gossip Girl characters.”

Sebastian snorts.

“Fair.” He steps back, then, making a grandiose gesture that Kurt only responds to by raising an eyebrow and turning his nose comically up, as though that kind of welcome was just the beginning of what he deserved. 

The way that somehow warms him up, the way he can see a clear split between how annoying he would’ve considered the gesture just a couple of months ago, and how it’s just another one of Kurt’s quirks that he can’t help but find oddly fascinating or just simply hilarious is troubling. 

Troubling, yes, but also incredibly easy to shove aside for the moment in favor of their banter, both of them quick-witted and with just the same hint of steel in them now and again to be evenly matched, as Kurt primly slides his bag strap over his head, letting it land with a soft thud next to his feet, and then proceeds to deftly unbutton and remove his coat, casting a glance at his surroundings before sighing and neatly folding it over his arm.

“How is it that you of all people, don’t own a coat rack?” Kurt’s disappointment is palpable in the way he shakes his head minutely, and pets his folded coat like he’s trying to soothe it.

Sebastian throws himself on the couch, and leans an arm over the back of it, craning his neck to keep Kurt in his field of vision. 

“Do I look like the kind of guy who cares about coat racks?”

“You look like the kind of guy who doesn’t concern himself with buying his own furniture.”

Sebastian can’t help his grin, then.

“Not to mess with your worldview,” he starts, twisting his body so that he can rest a cheek on his shoulder and fully display the sheer shit-eating quality of his grin, “but I furnished this whole place myself. I have hidden depths, _darling_.”

He doesn’t know he’s going to tack that last word there until he hears it come out of himself, and then it’s too late to do anything about it. Words can’t be unsaid, there’s no magical way to just grab a word out of thin air and swallow it back down.

They’ve called each other pet names before during their run-ins—Kurt is particularly fond of ‘babe’ and ‘honey’, and Sebastian often goes for things like ‘tiger’ and ‘gorgeous’— , but it’s always been with the understanding that it was all part of the game.

There’s no game here. There’s just the ghost of that one word, hanging between them, as Kurt blinks at him.

“Well,” Kurt says, and he’d be the picture of composure if he wasn’t petting his coat like some disturbingly floppy animal. “I guess that’s one good way to remind us why we’re here.”

Somehow Kurt’s nerves soothe Sebastian’s own; if they’re both stumbling around this, then that means they’re on equal footing. Whatever awkwardness there is goes both ways, and neither holds any power over the other.

“Unless you’re planning to spend the whole evening standing there, there’s a perfectly serviceable couch here. You can even put your coat over the armrest, if you’re feeling separation anxiety.”

“You’re a terrible host,” Kurt tells him, then, even as he lays his coat down on the armrest, and his bag by the side of the couch.

 

“Let’s keep our get-together story as close to the truth as possible.” Kurt takes the bottled water Sebastian is offering, and glares at him when he drops back onto the couch with his own as Kurt’s uncapping it, nearly causing him to spill on himself. “We don’t want to unnecessarily create opportunities for disaster.”

“So, we found each other in the ever romantic... what was that bar even called?”

Kurt frowns in thought, and taps the bottle against his lips a couple of times.

“The Razzle Dazzle, I think?” 

Sebastian gapes.

“Our grand love story can’t begin in a bar called _The Razzle Dazzle._ That’s just sad.” He scrunches his nose in distaste. 

“Trust me,” Kurt says, “there are much worse places out there we could have met each other again at. Remind me to tell you about The Wrong Number, sometime. Elliott got propositioned by an octogenarian dressed like a pirate.”

“What’s your band called?”

Kurt tilts his head to look at him with one raised eyebrow from where he’s more or less sprawled, having basically colonized half of his couch.

Sebastian shrugs.

“It would be weird not to know the name of my boyfriend’s band.”

“That’s true,” Kurt agrees. Then he adds, his tone almost daring Sebastian to say something, “One Three Hill.”

“Huh. That’s clever.” Kurt seems to be repressing some serious preening, so Sebastian smirks and says, just to ruffle his feathers, “It was probably your bandmates who came up with that one, right?” 

Kurt grabs a cushion and hurls it towards him, with impressive aim.

He might’ve said something along those lines, because Kurt parrots, playful, “I have hidden depths, _darling_.”

Sebastian laughs.

 

Once they put the basics of their story together—how it all began (“Sebastian, I’m not telling your mom and your _grandma_ we found love at some random pseudo frat guy’s keg party. At least The Razzle Dazzle has some— some charm about it, two rivals rediscovering each other through music. And some bickering, just to spice things up. It makes a good meet-cute. Or, well, meet-again-cute if we want to get technical.” Kurt’s eyes had been so alight and determined while he delivered this little spiel that Sebastian had acquiesced), how long it’s been going on (“It’s been a month, I think?” Kurt squints at him, and Sebastian shrugs, because it’s not like he’s been keeping track either), why they’re keeping it relatively hush (“I recently got out of a serious relationship,” Kurt says, and there’s something hollow in his voice. Sebastian only nods, knowing he’s the most inadequate person for the task of trying to do anything about that, even if he wanted to)— they just lie on the couch, asking each other questions that they might need to know the answers to, in order to sell this. Birthday, interests, what crappy reality shows they watch in their downtime. Kurt tells him about his internship at Vogue, and Sebastian talks about the summer spent interning with Westerville’s DA office (“A glorified title for being my dad’s errand boy, really.”) before college. They’ve somehow learned enough about each other’s majors and social circles through osmosis that there’s not much to share, which is weird to realize.

When they seem to have run out of useful questions, Kurt asks, “Favorite color?”

“Do people who are dating _really_ know that about each other?”

 _Did you know Blaine’s favorite color?_ is what he’d barely avoided blurting out.

Kurt shrugs, tapping his empty water bottle against his own thigh, a drop or two falling from it since the cap’s not entirely screwed onto his fashionable acid wash skinny jeans. He stares, unblinking, at the TV. It’s turned off.

“Sometimes,” he says after a while, voice a little hoarse. He clears his throat before adding, “It really depends on the couple. I don’t think Finn—” He stops abruptly there, and blinks a couple of times.

Finn. The freakishly tall step-brother. The guy Sebastian photoshopped naked and wearing pumps to blackmail New Directions.

Finn, the guy who— the guy who died, not too long ago.

“I’m so—”

“ _Finn_ ,” Kurt interrupts him, with intent, “probably never knew Rachel’s favorite color. Or Quinn’s.”

It’s not so much a cue as it is a barbed wire fence, with a nice little sign telling him in no uncertain terms he’s not allowed to go further.

“Mulberry,” he says, then. 

Kurt blinks a couple of times in quick succession, eyebrows drawn, as if Sebastian picking up on a social cue was something that he’d never expected him to be able to do. Or, in all fairness, as if him picking up on a social cue _and_ deciding not to be an asshole about it by completely ignoring it was something he’d never expected him to do.

It’d be satisfying to watch him be lost for words for once, if it didn’t also remind him of all the ways he’d hurt others by choice, for no other reason than the fact that he could, and he thought he’d never have to face consequences for all the stuff he pulled. 

“That’s… a nice color,” Kurt says, cutting into his grim thoughts. “Very regal.”

“Yours?”

Kurt seems to seriously mull this over. 

“I don’t know, actually,” is what he goes with, after about a minute of quiet humming and eyes narrowed in thought. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it.”

Sebastian’s eyebrows lift in surprise.

Kurt shrugs.

“Huh,” Sebastian exhales, resting his head against the couch’s backrest.

It’s probably stupid, the way that one single question makes the moment feel strangely meaningful. 


	6. Chapter 6

“So, when exactly are we expecting your lovely mother and grandmother?” Kurt asks the next time they run into each other a couple of days later, dropping onto the empty chair next to his that had been recently vacated by some guy on Sebastian’s General Chemistry class who’d begged off with the excuse of an early morning (Sebastian privately thought he had a hook up lined up, judging by the way he’d been surgically attached to his phone).

This time, Sebastian can admit, he’d kind of expected it. Callbacks had been Cheyenne’s idea, and it had immediately struck him as the kind of place that would be a NYADA hangout. So he hadn’t been surprised to find Kurt hanging out with his bandmates (“You do know they have names, right?” Kurt had drawled back in his apartment, last Friday. 

Sebastian had pretended to be in thought for a couple of minutes before venturing, as earnestly as he could possibly make himself, “Danah and Eric?”), and a couple of people who look like they might be his classmates, in a rowdy, cramped table. 

At a point, when Sebastian had been ordering drinks for everyone at the bar, Kurt had walked up to him and they’d kind of stood shoulder to shoulder, no hellos or any other attempt at small talk, as Sebastian waited for the bartender. Then Kurt had helped him carry half the drinks, and walked back to his own table after, sending a cheerful wave in Cheyenne’s direction, who had waved back excitedly and then, once Kurt’s back was turned on them, given Sebastian a pointed stare that only earned her a raised eyebrow before he handed her her drink.

Sebastian figured that’d be it for tonight, since Callbacks didn’t seem like the kind of place where either of them would need someone to come to their rescue with PDA and pet names, and barely concealed scorn. 

And yet, here Kurt is, sipping his cocktail and casting him a glance through his lashes.

“Is that a Shirley Temple?” He asks, going for mocking, and landing somewhere between playful and flirtatious. 

He blames it on the two Dry Martinis he’s had, and the fact that Kurt’s shirt is form-fitting enough to show off the strength of his shoulders. Sebastian’s matured enough to admit to himself that Kurt’s an attractive guy, and his inhibitions aren’t precisely at their highest.

“Dirty Shirley,” Kurt corrects him, graciously choosing to ignore Sebastian’s momentary insanity. 

Sebastian lifts an eyebrow in what does probably successfully come out as playful mockery, and Kurt shrugs. 

“Don’t knock it until you try it,” he says.

And then something wicked glints in his eyes, and he extends the drink towards Sebastian, batting his eyelashes at him, and teases, “Wanna give it a go, _darling_?”

And Sebastian, who’s never known how to back down from a challenge either, even one he was almost certain he was gonna lose, just smirks at Kurt and puts a hand over his on the cocktail glass, leaning in to wrap his lips around the straw, maintaining eye contact as he sucks the drink up through it, hollowing his cheeks more than necessary.

When he hears chuckles and wolf-whistles, he’s reminded of where exactly they are and draws back, licking his lips for effect.

Kurt just grabs his straw back, and takes a sip of his own drink, unaffected.

The chuckles around them gain intensity. He can pick out Cheyenne from the crowd, and thinks _traitor_.

“So,” Kurt says, and the tone is clearly playfully dismissive. “Your lovely mother and grandmother. When are we expecting them?”

“In two weeks’ time,” he tells him, going back to the beer he’s been nursing for the past half an hour. “Mom has some business to attend to.”

Kurt puts his drink down on the table, and Sebastian watches as he fiddles with it for a couple of seconds.

When he’s finally done, he asks, “How long are they staying for?”

In the background, someone’s caterwauling to something that might have once been an Adele song. When they botch a high note, Kurt rubs his temples and heaves a sigh. Sebastian can’t help the smile that slips out at the gesture. 

“A week, I think.” The singer in the background botches another note, and seeing the way Kurt’s lips thin in irritation, he can’t help but add, “You should go up there, show them how it’s done.”

Kurt cocks his head to the side, and shoots him a contemplative look.

“Is that a compliment from Sebastian Smythe?”

Sebastian rests an elbow on the jam-packed round table, and puts his chin on his palm, as he turns his body to face Kurt more fully.

“Well, I could always be setting you up for failure.”

The look that gets him isn’t contemptuous, like he would’ve once gotten from Kurt after a comment like that, but full of feigned, exaggerated disbelief. 

Just like that, Sebastian’s left watching Kurt’s retreating back for the second time in the same night, but this time Kurt’s determinedly striding towards the side of the stage, exchanging words with the person who seems to be in charge of the list of performers.

Cheyenne abandons her own conversation with their two other classmates as soon as Kurt is off, plopping onto his empty seat. 

“You two,” she starts, with a grin that lights up her whole face, and she points at him and Kurt, in the distance, “are absolutely disgusting.”

“We aren’t—”

“This song,” Kurt cuts him short, from the stage, to hoots and hollers from his own table and a couple of others who seem to be regulars, “is for someone _incredibly special_.”

The crowd eats it up, breaking into all sorts of approving noises, and Sebastian huffs out a quiet laugh, and Cheyenne’s hand comes up to rest on his arm.

Kurt, on the stage, locks eyes with him, and starts singing.

 

The next morning, he texts Kurt _so, do I just happen to remind you of songs from infamous BDSM movies?_

_Only the cheesy ones that annoy me_ , is Kurt’s reply. 

When he gets to his ten o’clock lecture, Cheyenne—who honestly looks like death warmed over— tells him he looks way too cheery for someone who she knows for a fact got back home later than she did, and he only gives her an annoying waggle of his eyebrows that’s specifically designed to make her snicker and drop the subject.

 

That Friday, when he’s in the library, gathering his belongings after their study group’s decided they’ve tortured themselves enough for a day at around nine o‘clock, his phone starts vibrating in his jeans’ pocket.

There’s only so many people it can be, with most of his social circle in the same room as he is, yet it still takes him somewhat by surprise to see the name Kurt Hummel flashing on his screen.

_“Sebastian Smythe, we’re going out tonight.”_

Sebastian cocks his hip against the sturdy wooden table.

“Oh, really? So nice of you to inform me.”

Cheyenne, a couple of chairs away, looks up from where she’s shoving stuff inside her bag with narrowed, focused eyes. 

_Like a shark smelling blood._

_“We’re doing a trial run.”_

“A trial run?”

There’s some noise from the other side of the line, laughter, bustle, cars. Kurt must be on the move.

_“Yes, a trial run. Tonight you’re my devoted boyfriend. Aren’t you just the luckiest guy alive?”_

He frowns. He can tell the throwaway comment was meant to be a joke, but the way Kurt’s voice goes flat at the end, dry... It’s almost self-deprecating. 

“I am,” he replies. When he realizes the weird earnestness of just saying that, he adds, “Well. I would be. But _you_ get to be my boyfriend tonight, so I think we all know who the luckier one is here.”

Kurt huffs out an incredulous laugh before telling him he’ll text him the details in a while, before excusing himself (“I’m about to take the subway. If you don’t hear from me in about an hour, assume I’m spending the night in a cell for strangling a creep with my Ferragamo scarf.”) and hanging up. The last thing he hears is another huff of incredulous laughter before the call cuts off. It makes the tips of his fingers itch.

He pockets his phone and finds Cheyenne’s eyes, still firmly on him, and narrowed even further. Her hands are still over her half-packed belongings. He mouths _what?_ at her, and her eyes widen as she lets out a snort so violent, that the other three people still remaining on the table shoot her worried glances that she dismisses with a wave of a hand and an apologetic smile.

To her credit, she waits until they’re outside, with the chilly air rustling their hair and the cacophony of the city engulfing them before she blurts out, “You are _so_ into him.”

He jams his hands inside his coat pockets and starts walking at a brisk pace, just so she’ll have to sprint to match his stride, with her much much shorter legs. She isn’t fazed, however, probably used to a lifetime of taller people being assholes. 

“You _are_ ,” she repeats, and there’s wonder in her voice, like she’s discovered the cure to some rare, incurable disease. “And I bet he is too. Nobody agrees to help someone else with something like this just out of the kindness of their heart. Much less when there’s, y’know, _history_. _Ugly_ history.”

Sebastian slows down, and lets Cheyenne catch up with him.

“Your romantic notions are very cute, but they’re also wildly off base.” He cranes his neck in her direction, and adds, “And you don’t know him. Kurt Hummel is exactly the kind of person who does ridiculous things for others just out of the kindness of his heart.”

Cheyenne wrinkles her nose in incredulity. Sebastian hums in agreement to the sentiment.

“Wow,” she sighs after a while. She rubs her hands together and blows on them. “Leave it to you to fall for a saint.”

“Believe me,” he drawls, “he’s not a saint.”

They both realize his lack of a denial about him having fallen for Kurt at the same time. Sebastian sighs, taking a hand out of his pocket to pinch the bridge of his nose, and he _feels_ Cheyenne getting a little extra bounce in her step.

“And I haven’t fallen for him,” he completes, even though it’s useless now. “He’s not a saint, and I haven’t fallen for him. We are— acquaintances.”

“Really? Because— Okay, just let me lay down the facts for you: you are all over each other whenever you happen to cross paths, he’s helping you deceive your mother, he’s been to your _apartment_ — and don’t pretend like that’s not noteworthy, Sebastian, you never take guys home. And now, he’s asking you out. That sure looks like a little more than acquaintances. I mean, at least go with friends? Don’t insult my intelligence, I had a 3.8 GPA, and I was captain of my debate team. I also happen to be all that’s standing between you and a B- in Principles of Biology.”

“And I am most thankful for that. Do you want some Starbucks?”

Cheyenne purses her lips at him, like she knows exactly what he’s doing, but he knows that she had a morning class (with a TA that grates on her nerves without even trying), and she gives in pretty much a second or two after the offer is made, heaving a sigh of resignation that Sebastian can’t help but smile at, entertained, and softened, by her antics.


	7. Chapter 7

Sebastian finds them huddled outside of the nightclub. They’re by far the easiest group to spot, even though there’s only three of them. 

Mostly because they’re singing a 3-part harmony.

“You are aware your life isn’t actually a musical, right?” He whispers into Kurt’s ear when he’s close enough to do so, and is instantly rewarded by him jumping about a foot into the air. 

“I’m already regretting this,” Kurt says as he turns around to face him, a fist over his chest. Behind him, Elliott and Dani exchange charged glances, and he shoots them a winning smile.

“Well, _darling_. I’m already here, so it’s too late to uninvite me.”

“ _Uninvite you_ ,” Kurt repeats, pointedly, like the words are the most ridiculous ones he’s heard all day. He looks him up and down, and Sebastian feels himself unconsciously standing taller, and when he notices he battles the sudden impulse to just hunch his shoulders again, because that’s the kind of thing Kurt would notice. “You actually own clothes that don’t make my insides want to shrivel up.”

Sebastian shoots him an exaggerated once-over.

“I wish I could say the same.”

“You’ll earn the right to talk trash about my wardrobe when you stop wearing polo shirts with the collars popped.” He turns back to his bandmates then, who are looking on with badly concealed fascination. “Dani, Elliott, this is Sebastian Smythe.”

“The fake boyfriend.” Elliott thrusts a hand encased in a fingerless glove in his direction, wearing an amused smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Sebastian can read the vigilance and scepticism in the tension of his shoulders. 

Sebastian shakes the proffered hand, as firmly as he was taught by his parents, to inspire trust. 

Dani, by Elliott’s side, watches the handshake, face carefully blank. 

Her expression changes almost immediately into a beaming smile. And while it’s not insincere, Sebastian can tell by the way she briefly looks at Kurt that she might also have her doubts concerning him.

“Pleased to meet the elusive fake boyfriend,” she chatters, regardless, bouncing a little on her toes, her blonde hair bobbing along with her, as if it somehow shared her enthusiasm, even in the face of unknown variables.

It’s probably not his place to judge the people Kurt keeps company with—they are probably the ones with that kind of right—, but he’s still strangely relieved to find that he has people like them looking out for him—nice people, good people , even in the absence of his little New Directions friends. 

“The line is moving.” Kurt’s eyes are fixed on the bouncer, and if he’s aware of what just transpired he shows no sign of it. He’s kind of rocking a little on his feet, thrumming with energy. 

It feeds his own energy, and soon he finds himself trying not to rock along, jamming his hands on his jeans’ pockets so he won’t give in to an urge to do something he’ll regret come morning.

He catches Dani’s eyes as they all start moving, and the smile she gives him then is softer, for some reason, all dimples and teeth and warm eyes. 

 

“So… fake boyfriends.” Dani hops on top of a stool chair as she more or less shouts the words in their general direction, and Sebastian has to bite off comments about ladders and other similar stuff (and he imagines that, somewhere, Cheyenne’s heart swells with pride without her knowing exactly why). “I hope you know you are living in a rom-com.”

Elliott’s shoulders shake with laughter as he follows her lead and takes the vacant stool next to hers, with the grace that his height provides him. He lays Dani’s drink in front of her on the table (the table Kurt acquired for them as soon as they made their way in through unquestioned yet impressive methods), and then his own. 

Kurt sits on the other side of the table, and grabs his own drink from Sebastian, shooting him a thankful smile that Sebastian finds himself returning automatically as he sits on the stool next to Kurt’s, the space between them almost nonexistent, making their thighs touch. Sebastian wills himself to ignore the heat that radiates from that single point of contact.

“Well, if this is a romantic comedy, then I demand a refund,” Kurt says, sipping his drink. “Where is my Ryan Gosling? My James Marsden?”

Sebastian shoves him lightly with a shoulder, narrowing his eyes in mock-offense. Kurt only bats his eyes at him innocently, hiding a lopsided smirk behind his drink, taking a long, deliberate swig of it.

There’s a kind of— intensity, in the way they hold each other’s gazes, even with the smile and the pretense, even with the noise and the music, and the strobe lights. Sebastian has felt it before, has tried to bury it, to ignore it, to rationalize it, to make it go away. And it’s still there, itching under his skin.

“Seriously,” Elliott says, voice rising above everything else. He can see Kurt sort of startle, and can feel the way his own muscles lock, irrationally taken by surprise. “These are some serious rom-com shenanigans.”

Kurt breaks eye contact, and Kurt can see the way his posture gains some rigidity, even as he turns a friendly gaze to his friends.

“I’m just helping out a— an acquaintance,” he tells them, putting his drink down, fiddling with his plastic stirrer. “Plus, it’s acting experience.”

He hears the hesitation, the slight stumble, and it reminds him of Cheyenne telling him not to insult her intelligence by downplaying their relationship. Mostly, it just stirs him, makes his gut knot up for whatever weird reason. 

If Dani and Elliott can hear Kurt’s slip up as easily as he could (and there’s no reason for them not to, since they’re Kurt’s actual _friends_ ), then they’re more discreet than anyone else Kurt’s ever associated himself with, because neither of them points it out. Elliott just shakes his head, and takes a swig of his beer, And Dani keeps smiling the way she did when Sebastian caught her gaze before they made their way in, warm, soft, a little unnerving in all it seems she’s seeing that Sebastian isn’t.

“Let’s dance,” Kurt says then, grabbing Dani’s other hand. He shoots Sebastian a questioning look, but Sebastian just shakes his head.

“I’m finishing my drink first,” he explains, holding said drink up. 

Elliott refuses for a similar reason, and then they’re both left watching Dani and Kurt’s backs as they make their way towards the dancefloor, hands held and leaning into each other to trade comments that make the other smile or laugh. 

There’s silence for a while, as Kurt and Dani find themselves a spot. Sebastian nurses his drink, and Elliott does the same, and Sebastian can feel the thrum of anticipation in his own body, can feel himself gearing up to whatever Elliott is preparing to throw at him.

Only when it comes, it’s nothing he could’ve known to prepare for.

“You have no idea what you're getting into,” is what he says after a while of seemingly trying to choose his words. “You might think you do, and that you have everything figured out, but Kurt just has a way of… changing things. And people.” Elliott sips his beer when he's done, and his eyes never stray from where Kurt is on the dance floor, laughing along with Dani. 

Sebastian frowns, momentarily lost for words. 

When he regains his composure, a couple of seconds later, he provokes, “Is that personal experience? Am I stepping on your toes here, Starchild?”

Elliott laughs, with his beer bottle still pressed to his lips. He takes another swig before saying, “That ship has sailed. The timing was never right for us.”

“So you’re what? Secretly pining for him?” Sebastian takes a swig of his own drink, relishing the burn of it as it goes down. “You dramatic arts types really take your stuff to the next level.”

Elliott just turns his head to smirk at him for a couple of seconds, before going back to Kurt-watching, stance as relaxed as it was before.

“I’m his friend,” he says after a lull in the conversation. “He’s a great guy. He really, genuinely cares about people, even when it comes to those who’ve given him pretty much no reason to care about them. It makes me feel like trying to be the best version of myself, y’know? And I’m not saying I would turn him down tomorrow if he suddenly decided he wanted to give us a go, but I’m happy with us as we are.”

On the dance floor, Kurt twirls Dani around, ignoring the cues from the thumping bass. 

Sebastian can’t help the way one corner of his mouth lifts up in what he can worryingly instantly recognize as fond amusement.

“How does he ever get laid like that?” He asks, chuckling when Dani attempts to twirl Kurt back.

“Oh, he’d have no problem there if he was just looking for that, trust me. We are regulars here, and Kurt gets enough lingering looks and free drinks that he’d hardly be pressed for that kind of thing.”

“And he isn’t looking for it?” 

“Aren’t you supposed to know Kurt a little better than that?”

Sebastian shrugs and downs the rest of his drink.

“He always gave a prude-ish air back in high school, but who knows, he might’ve changed since.”

“Oh, trust me, Kurt’s no prude. Sentimental and romantic? Sure. Prude? No way.” 

“Oh?” He arches his brows.

Elliott just gives him a sly smile, all _wouldn’t you want to know,_ and then says, “I just don’t think he feels ready to do the no strings attached thing yet. He might make out with a guy or two if the mood strikes but he always bows out when hands start wandering too south of the border. He’s an old fashioned guy at heart. He doesn’t want to have sex, he wants to make love.”

“Well, that’s a tall order for a hook up.”

Elliott shrugs.

Right then a guy approaches Dani and Kurt, and he’s clearly vying for Kurt’s attention,with his flirty smile, the way he’s trying to show his body off, shirtless and shameless, and the lingering hands on Kurt’s hips as he insinuates himself into their little dance party; Kurt seems unbothered by the attention, but hardly interested himself. When the guy leans into him to whisper something in his ear, Kurt’s lips curl into a smile that Sebastian knows well. It’s the one that’s trying not to be sardonic but isn’t quite managing it and ends up falling just short of the mark, the one that Kurt would direct at him in front of Blaine once upon time, in the moments when he couldn’t just drop the act and attempt to verbally flay him alive.

There’s a thrill in him at the sight of it, and he feels his lips curl into a little smile of his own, much meaner.

Kurt puts his hands on this guy’s chiselled, glitter-covered chest and leans into him, whispering something to him in turn.

The guy finds Sebastian’s gaze through the crowd then, and Sebastian’s smile blooms into a smug smirk as he sees the displeasure taking over his face. He turns back to Kurt, and seems to still be trying to negotiate his way into his bed, but Kurt makes quick work of turning him down, face soft but stance determined.

When the guy finally takes his abs and his glitter elsewhere, Kurt's shoulders sag a little, before Dani's arms are around his waist, guiding him in some sort of slow dance that draws a smile out of him.

_Maybe this whole thing is doing something for him, too_ , he thinks. _Maybe I’m buying him some time to get whatever it is he’s carrying around out, without having to explain himself— without needing to expose the shit that’s hurting him for everyone to see._

On the dance floor, Dani and Kurt keep slow dancing, occasionally colliding against other club-goers, and dissolving into what looks like fits of giggling each time, after they apologize and before they’re off again, waltzing to some remixed top 40 song that none of them will remember in ten years. 

Whatever Elliott’s misguided concerns might be? Sebastian can’t really find it in himself to worry about them, right now.


	8. Chapter 8

“Your apartment is at the other end of the city, Sebastian,” Kurt tries to reason when Sebastian offers to see him back to Bushwick.

Sebastian just starts walking towards the nearest subway station. When he’s a couple of steps away he stops to crane his neck and argue, “It wouldn’t look right to my mom if you got mugged because I wasn’t there to make sure you got home safe, _darling_.” 

Kurt’s eyebrows dip over his nose in a pensive expression, but his face smooths out almost instantly, taken over instead by a haughtiness that Sebastian can see is mostly there for the sake of pretense, of flippancy. 

“Please.” Kurt starts walking, taking a pair of soft-looking wool gloves from one of his coat pockets and quickly putting them on. When he’s almost by Sebastian’s side, he looks up at him with a teasing smile. “We’re roughly the same build, and I may be a pacifist but I’ve learned how to throw a decent punch. Plus, I’ve lived in Bushwick for over a year already.” 

“Well, then,” Sebastian says, smirk still firmly in place, as they resume their walk together. Closer than mere acquaintances probably would, even with the slightly chill of the night closing in on them, arms brushing with every step. “Maybe _you_ should be making sure I’m getting home safe.”

“Well,” Kurt parrots back at him, and the way his eyes light up tells Sebastian he’s somehow lost himself this weird battle of wills, even though he doesn’t feel like it, at all. “I _was_ the one who asked you out, so it might be the proper thing to do. I wouldn’t want your mother to think I’m anything but a gentleman.”

“Lord forbid that,” Sebastian mocks, but the light shove he gets in retaliation is playful, and when he looks up at Kurt, there’s pink rising on his cheeks, and a satisfied curl to his lips.

His stomach swoops, so he tries to distract himself by counting the number of stations between the one they’re taking and the one that’s closest to his apartment.

It’s not enough to stop him from shivering when Kurt pulls him out of the way of someone riding their bike on the sidewalk; or from feeling that same rush of fondness at the soft muttering about municipal ordinances and irresponsible people.

 

“You’re getting glitter all over me,” he complains as Kurt leans on him on the subway ride back to his place. 

Kurt rolls his eyes, and tries to stifle a yawn behind a glittery glove.

“I doubt glitter’s the worst thing that’s gotten all over you, Sebastian Smythe.”

Sebastian hums, contemplative.

“But all those other worse things were so much fun to get all over me,” is what he says after a second or two of companionable silence.

The startled peel of laughter that comes out of Kurt is only made more satisfying by the way a middle-aged woman sitting in front of them glares at them reprovingly. 

Sebastian just winks at her, and leans back into the unyielding seat, kicking his feet out.

“You’re a despicable human being,” Kurt says once he’s gotten himself under control, a little breathless. His eyes sparkle mischievously, however, and he resumes melting into Sebastian’s side, eyes closing as he hums softly to himself.

Sebastian can’t really place the melody, but it sounds familiar nonetheless, and it makes him think about the nicer parts of Dalton, the rare moments when there was camaraderie with the Warblers, the way it felt to perform, how it was like puzzle pieces all falling into place as every voice intertwined into a single harmony.

His eyes slide shut.

 

He opens them again several stations later, when they’re almost at their destination, to Kurt’s soft voice in his ear.

“If you don’t wake up the nice way,” Kurt is saying, lilting, “I’ll have to shove you off. Our lady friend might even find that more acceptable.”

“You wouldn’t shove a sleeping guy to the floor. You’re too much of a good person,” he argues, lips brushing against the soft fabric of Kurt’s coat. 

He tenses for a couple as he realizes he was basically sleeping on Kurt, but the warmth of Kurt next to him, and the motion of the almost empty subway car make it hard for him to stay that away, lull him back into a drowsy sort of calm.

“I would if said guy had drooled all over my Burberry coat,” Kurt counters, and the vibration of his voice sinking into him makes him realize Kurt’s leaning back into him.

The middle-aged woman sitting in front of them looks vaguely scandalized, even as her eyes roam the rest of the empty car, as if looking for distractions.

He snorts, trying to cull the ugly little feeling surging inside of him at the sight of her discomfort over their very _existence_. 

“I don’t drool,” he says. “That’s nothing but slander.”

Kurt hums, and Sebastian feels the vibrations again, shivers.

“This is our stop,” Kurt tells him, when they start slowing down, and he starts to extricate himself from the human pretzel they’ve somehow turned themselves into.

Kurt stands up as the train comes to a halt, slowly, gripping the stanchion. Sebastian’s following his lead when he sees the middle-aged woman out of the corner of his eye.

The doors are opening as he tugs on Kurt’s sleeve, utters a soft “hey” that draws Kurt’s attention almost immediately. 

Sebastian kisses him.

It’s a simple thing: a chaste peck on the lips, a hand on the shoulder. It lasts about a second, one blink and then it’s gone. 

Kurt’s are closed when Sebastian draws back, and when they flutter open he immediately casts a glance in the middle-aged woman’s way, lips curling in satisfaction at what he sees.

Sebastian doesn’t need to look. 

He holds Kurt’s hand as they walk out of the car, his head high.

 

Kurt doesn’t say anything about it as they walk the block or so up to Sebastian’s apartment building. He doesn’t need to.

Out of anyone he’s ever met, Kurt is probably the one person who gets it, with his big heart and his morals, and his core of pure steel.

It’s all comfortable silence between until they’re at his front door, and Sebastian can intuit what Kurt’s plans are even before he reaches for his keys in the way he’s squaring his shoulders, the ease of his movements bleeding out little by little.

“You’re staying over.” He unlocks his door as he says this, and when no response is forthcoming, he cranes his neck to shoot Kurt a determined look.

Kurt’s staring at him, eyes soft, a corner of his mouth just barely tilted up, no trace of fight in him.

“You’re a lot nicer than you like to let on, Sebastian Smythe.”

“Even more slander,” he jokes, as he holds the door open with one hand and gestures for Kurt to walk in with the other one. 

Kurt shoots him a knowing look as he walks by; the barely tilted corner of his mouth is still there, and his eyes are still soft and a little crinkled. 

Sebastian has to swallow an unnamed urge, hand tightening on the door’s handle. 

 

“The guest bedroom is down the hall, first door to the right.” He toes his shoes off, leaving them by the door, and starts making his way towards his bedroom. “I’ll grab you something to sleep in.”

Kurt makes a vaguely acknowledging noise, and when Sebastian turns to look at him, he sees him collapsed on the couch, head thrown back, an arm over his eyes. 

He looks exhausted like that. 

There are mocking remarks swimming around in his head, ugly little jabs about Kurt looking old and stinking his place up with the stench of his sadness, all of it pushing to get out just to rile Kurt up, to make him put up a fight. To stop him from looking so— defeated. 

Underneath, there are questions. Dozens of them, gathering at the tip of his tongue. 

Sebastian is curious by nature, but this goes beyond, even if he can’t put his finger on how, or why exactly that is. 

It’s unnerving. 

_It’s fucking scary_ , he admits to himself, and turns his back on Kurt again, purposefully. 

 

Sebastian hands Kurt a pair of ugly plaid flannel pajamas that a clueless relative had sent as a birthday gift a couple of years ago. He’d seen them at the bottom of his dresser drawer, untouched, and immediately gone for them, a smirk firmly in place.

Sebastian is practically waiting with bated breath for his reaction— he can almost see the sneer in his mind’s eye, almost hear the scathing insults.

He’s childishly excited for it.

Kurt, however, seems to live to defy expectations, and so all he does when Sebastian presents him with the ugliest pair of pajamas that have ever seen the light of day, is blink a couple of times before cracking a fond little smile as he grabs them, smoothing a hand over the fabric.

When Kurt catches sight of his furrowed brows, he just shrugs, says, “Plaid flannel reminds me of my dad. It might not be the… most elegant choice of fabric and pattern, granted, but it’s familiar.”

“Oh.” Sebastian stifles the itch to shuffle awkwardly in place, straightening his back instead, crossing his arms over his chest. 

It’s weird, how Kurt is the one revealing parts of himself for Sebastian to see, and somehow _he_ is the one who feels exposed by it.

The silence stretches for a couple of seconds, while Kurt unfolds the pajamas and studies them (they’re still as ugly as Sebastian remembered them being), before folding them back again, fast and skillful.

Kurt is the one to break it, when pants and shirt are back in his lap, folded into neat little squares on top of each other, voice almost a whisper. 

“You haven’t asked.”

His fingers twitch.

“About what?”

Kurt looks at him then, and his eyes are wide, full of more emotions that Sebastian can name.

“About Blaine.” One of his hands reaches towards the pajamas in his lap, and he starts rubbing the fabric of the shirt’s collar between two restless fingers. “I figured you would’ve, by now.”

His fingers twitch again, and the ones circling his upper arm dig into his flesh, nails long enough to make it sting.

“I figured it wasn’t my place,” he replies, nails digging in again when he realizes just how snappish the words turned out. 

Kurt takes it in stride, though. He nods, eyes still on him, now a little narrowed in contemplation.

“Do you ever—” He starts, before cutting himself abruptly. He looks back to his lap, where he’s still fiddling with the shirt. A couple of seconds pass before he ventures, “Do you ever think about what you would do if you could… go back in time and do things differently?”

Dave Karofsky’s face pops up in his mind, almost instantly.

“Sometimes.”

Kurt hums. Sebastian leans on the couch backrest.

“Would you do things differently?” He asks, and the words come out soft, softer than Sebastian has ever heard himself be.

Kurt’s fingers still for a second, and then they resume their motion.

“Some things.” He leans the side of his head on the backrest, inches away from Sebastian. “I would’ve— I would’ve told Finn I loved him more often. I would’ve _called_ more often. I would’ve picked up Dave’s calls. I would’ve—”

He stops, breathes in deeply, then out, slowly.

Sebastian’s nails dig deeper into his upper arm, doesn’t ask the question he’s itching to hear an answer to.

“I would’ve done so many things differently,” he settles for, after a couple of seconds. “But, and this is the tricky part, the hard part. Even though I would’ve done so many things different, with Blaine—God, so many—, I would’ve still broken off the engagement.”

Sebastian lets out an involuntary, surprised little sound.

“We loved each other so much, and we were so ready to fight for each other, but— we were just as ready to fight each other, and— eventually that’s all we did, anymore. Over— Jesus, over the most trivial stuff.” He pauses. His hands have moved onto the shirt’s buttons. “We weren’t talking. Not just to each other, but to anyone else. We were bottling everything up, all our problems, and our feelings. We weren’t being honest, and we were stagnating. ”

Sebastian tries to imagine the two naïve guys he once knew back in high school arguing, seriously. Tries to imagine them hurling ugly insults, and snarling at each other, growing bitter and distant. 

It’s unpleasant, even if he was never close to those guys, even though he once wanted to be the force to drive them apart. It sits in his stomach like lead, heavy and uncomfortable.

“He’s moving on. I think we are both moving on. Rachel says he— she says he’s doing better, that he’s seeing a therapist, working out some stuff. And— I am too. Seeing a therapist, working on some issues.”

“Do you think you…” He trails off, unsure of how to word his question so it won’t do more damage than it has to. He’s not used to being tactful, or to even wanting to be tactful, and it shows in the awkwardness of everything that’s lingering in the air between them, unsaid.

“I don’t know,” Kurt replies. “I like to think that we would have sought help, eventually. But I can’t know. All I know is that he’s better, and I’m better, but sometimes I roll over in bed at night and expect him to be there and he isn’t and I _miss him_. It just— letting go, even when you feel it’s for the best. It’s hard.”

Sebastian wouldn’t know.

 

His mom’s call the next day is— something.

She’s home, for one, so she video calls him on Skype instead of going for the more usual phone call. 

He listens to her rant about her job, about the newest additions to her personal library, about spiteful old men in the club she’s one day going to stab with a nail file, and about his dad’s newest hobby, only retaining about half of the information, until she stops mid-word and frowns at him.

“You haven’t listened to a word I said,” she concludes after a second or two of thorough scrutiny (or as thorough as the webcam allows it to be).

“I’m listening,” he argues, but it’s weak even to his own ears.

His mom hums, leans back on her swivel chair (and it squeaks, because she hasn’t changed it in about a decade, for whatever sentimental reason).

“So, what’s going on?”

Sebastian leans back on his own swivel chair. 

His first instinct is to lie.

But then he figures if there’s one good thing that can come out of whatever is going on in his head is selling their story to his mom, so he says, “It’s Kurt.”

She nods, and waits for him to go on. The image on the screen is a little grainy, but it doesn’t take from her earnestness, and suddenly there’s a pang of longing in his chest, for her, for the place that used to be home, for the simplicity of years past.

“He— I told you he was in a serious relationship for a while. It’d been over for some time before we— before us.”

His mom makes a sound of acknowledgement. 

“What I didn’t tell you is— they were engaged.”

He doesn’t know quite what he’s expecting, a gasp? Raised eyebrows? 

All he gets is, “I know.”

“You—?”

His mom sighs.

“There aren’t that many Kurt Hummels in Ohio, kiddo. Give your mother some credit.”

She hasn’t called him that since he hit his last growth spurt and started kicking up a delightful fuss over it anytime it came out. The nickname fits like a well-loved glove now, warm and soft.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’.” Her face softens into a playful smile. Then, she waves at him, “So?”

“So.” Sebastian’s stumped there.

_So what, exactly?_

_So Kurt confided in me, out of all people in the world? Told me about all the ways he stands by his decision to break the engagement off? Showed me just how much he’s capable to care for people, even when caring for them is hard? Even when it hurts?_

And that’s when the dam breaks, and he can do nothing but look down and frown at his own lap as it dawns on him.

He’s falling in love with Kurt Hummel.

“Oh, kiddo,” his mother clucks her tongue. 

“I’ll, uh, I’ll call you later,” he croaks out, and he barely hears her telling him to take care of himself before he’s disconnecting the call, feeling numb all over.

He’s up as soon as the laptop’s lid is down, walking over to his bed, throwing himself down on it. 

He lies on top of his bedspread for what feels like hours, just staring at his ceiling, combing through his memories, trying to find the point when everything shifted, when these feelings took hold, but it’s like water boiling to the untrained eye, at a point it isn’t, and then it is.

He thinks back to favorite colors, back to Sheryl, back to that homophobe, and it’s like so many dominoes falling one after the other.

He closes his eyes and pinches his nose, feeling a headache coming.

He thinks back to Elliott’s words, and then thinks _you weren’t misguided, after all, just really fucking late._


	9. Chapter 9

Most of the two weeks until his mom’s and grand-mère Jacqueline’s arrival pass in a blur.

The first one is a whirlwind of midterms; a whirlwind of cramming, getting little to no sleep, buying his meals from food carts, seeing people he hasn’t seen since they finished going through syllabi at the beginning of the semester. 

It’s good, it keeps him busy, keeps the wheels inside his head from turning until he’s exhausted. Keeps him from doing stupid shit. 

Cheyenne spends that whole week shooting him these looks that Sebastian pretends not to notice as he goes through notes and books, highlighter in hand like a lethal weapon, and more cups of coffee than is probably healthy for the one college student. 

The second one is the crash, like a practical demonstration of the law of universal gravitation. 

He spends most of it in bed, coughing until his throat is raw, going through boxes of tissues, grossing himself out with the sweat and snot, and the way he feels like he would be right at home inside a dumpster.

It’s already Thursday when he hears from Kurt. 

The worst of the cold has passed, and there’s only aches, sneezes, and a light fever that comes and goes, along with some reverting to early childhood and napping all the fucking time. 

He’s startled from a light, feverish doze, by his phone.

“Yes?” He slurs into the receiver, dragging a hand across his face.

_“Sebastian? What’s wrong?”_

His fucking heart skips a beat. It skips a beat like he’s in some kind of romance novel. 

“Nothing,” he says. “Did you—”

_“You’re sick,”_ Kurt interrupts, and really, for someone who strives to be such a perfect little gentleman, he does that a lot. 

“I’m not, I’m just—”

_“You sound like a younger, snobbier version of the Cookie Monster.”_

He bursts out into laughter, and then breaks into coughs.

_“So you aren’t sick, huh? Could’ve fooled me.”_

“Fine,” he grits out, and hisses when that hurts his throat. “I’m riding out a cold, it’s fine.”

_“Hmmm.”_ He hears rustling on the other end of the line. _“Midterms?”_

“Yeah,” he croaks out and closes his eyes. 

_“Elliott came down with a cold after his midterms too.”_

Sebastian hums, already drowsy again.

_“You’re falling asleep right now, aren’t you?”_

He hums again.

Kurt chuckles, and his stomach _flutters_ , Christ.

_“Okay, go back to sleep.”_ There’s more rustling, and what sounds like a door of some kind opening and closing, softly. _“See you soon.”_

“Sure,” he slurs, and then he’s out again, like a light. 

 

The doorbell wakes him up.

He stares up at his ceiling, groggily, and brings the phone that’s still loosely held in his hand up to see the time. 

Or he would, if his phone wasn’t dead. 

The doorbell rings again, and he groans. 

It takes him a couple of minutes to drag himself up and all the way over to the door.

When he opens the door to find Kurt, laden with plastic bags, he wishes he had stayed in bed. 

Kurt’s eyes roam over him, and Sebastian feels the tips of his ears burn with self-consciousness for what might be the first time in his life; he’s been wearing the same sweats since Tuesday maybe, and although he changed his shirt last night, it already feels grimy on him, stuck to a spot on his upper back.

When his eyes trail back to Sebastian’s own, Kurt is smiling, playful. 

“You don’t look sick at all.” The bags rustle in his hands, and Sebastian’s eyes are drawn to them.

“What’s that?” 

“Be a polite host and let me in and I’ll show you,” Kurt tells him, and when Sebastian looks back up again, the smile is wider, the corners of his eyes crinkled.

Sebastian’s throat itches, and if he has to be entirely honest (which he avoids, more often than not) he’s not completely sure he can blame it on the cold.

 

Kurt has apparently bought out a whole pharmacy, between the call and now. 

“When will I ever need this?” He says as he takes some of the over the counter stuff that Kurt brought over out of the bag, placing it in his kitchen island just to stare at it.

Kurt’s going through his cabinets, one of the bags on the counter next to him, heavier-looking than the ones he handed to Sebastian upon coming in.

“I’ve been in your bathroom,” Kurt tells him, disapproval in every word. “You don’t even own a first aid kit. You’d think a pre-med student would be wiser.”

The tips of Sebastian’s ears burn again.

Kurt locates a pot in his cabinet and makes a tiny pleased sound as he examines it that Sebastian finds unfairly cute.

The mystery of Kurt’s bag is solved rather anticlimactically when he takes a clear tupperware container from inside it, folding it into a triangle and setting it aside before he gets busy heating the contents of said container up in Sebastian’s stove, using Sebastian’s pot.

He hums as he does it, that same song from the subway car that Sebastian can’t quite place; he goes through Sebastian’s drawers and locates a wooden spoon and a ladle, laying down the latter at one side and going back to his pot with the former. 

He does it all like it’s— like it’s the most normal thing in the world, like it’s something people just do, showing up at others’ houses unannounced, bringing them meds, taking over their kitchens.

He just— stares. He lets his eyes roam over the expanse of Kurt’s back, taking in the patterns of his vest, the cut of his jeans, the shine of his boots. He lets his eyes linger on the nape of his neck, where a stray tuft of hair sticks up, giving the whole ensemble something sweet, naïve. 

He loses track of time, just watching Kurt, listening to him hum, thoughts muddled by what’s probably the fever, back again to fuck with him. One moment Kurt is puttering around, opening and closing cabinets, like his name is on the lease, and the next one there’s a steaming bowl in front of him.

“Eat up.” 

He blinks at the bowl.

Chicken noodle soup.

He can’t— there’s no logical explanation for the way his heart clenches, the way his throat closes up, the way his eyes sting. 

He just stares at the bowl. 

“I was on short notice so I had to use chicken stock from a box.” When Sebastian looks up at him, his eyes are on the bowl, nose wrinkled. “Sorry about that.” 

He actually sounds a little _rueful_ , and just.

How is this guy out there, everyday, just walking down the streets, being so fucking— not nice, nice is not the right word for a guy like Kurt Hummel, but just so— _good_. So honestly _good._ Good the way people who go to church every Sunday pretend to be, even when he screws up.

He swallows, and grabs for the spoon Kurt placed beside his bowl. 

“You do realize I’m not gonna be able to taste the difference, right?” He says, voice rough. He looks back up at Kurt, and smiles facetiously. “You could feed me wooden pellets right now, and tell me they’re some vegan snack and I would be none the wiser.”

Kurt snorts.

“Vegans are the only ones who could taste the difference between wooden pellets and a vegan snack.” He winces when the words are out, and adds, “Don’t tell Rachel I said that.”

“Your secret hatred of vegan snacks is safe with me,” he promises, facetious smile morphing into a fond one. 

Kurt smiles back, and his heart _races_ , so he coughs and digs into his bowl, before he gets the chance to embarrass himself.

 

Kurt stays over.

There’s no discussion about it, no asking. He just grabs his messenger bag from beside the door and walks down the hallway to the guest bedroom as Sebastian lies on the couch, with a wet washcloth on his forehead.

He should probably say something, for the sake of appearances if nothing else, but he’s too tired, too achy, shivering from cold yet still too fucking hot to put up with even a light blanket— he’s miserable. 

And it’s— nice. It’s nice to have Kurt walking around his place, acting as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, as though it’s where he belongs, in Sebastian’s space. 

And so he lets himself enjoy it, enjoy the way Kurt mutters under his breath as he comes out of the room, complaining about Sebastian not having changed the glitter-covered sheets since Kurt was last there, and going back to the kitchen, where he can hear the water running and the quiet sounds of his washing the dishes. 

Kurt eventually runs out of steam and starts humming again, and Sebastian closes his eyes, and sleeps.


	10. Chapter 10

The next time he opens his eyes, he realizes two things. One of them is that, other than some residual aches, he’s feeling fine (and a part of him wonders exactly what Kurt fed him the day before). The other, more pressing detail, is that his mom’s upside down face is hovering above him.

“Well, isn’t this an adorable picture.” Her voice is quiet, and she’s giving him a lopsided smile, eyes crinkled in mirth.

Only years and years of honing his reflexes through gruelling lacrosse drills prevents him from falling to the floor on his ass, it doesn’t quite stop him from hitting his head on the couch armrest in his haste to sit up.

He hisses, and hears his mom chuckle as he runs his hand over his hair, wrinkling his nose when he feels how sweaty and gross it feels.

“What are—”

His mom interrupts him by shushing him, placing a finger over her lips and nodding to a side.

Sebastian follows the gesture and finds Kurt sprawled in the armchair next to the couch, asleep. In one hand, he’s loosely holding a towel that Sebastian suspects had been used on him at some point last night.

His whole chest burns.

“You’re early,” he whispers, tearing his gaze away from Kurt’s sleeping figure and focusing back on his mom, whose eyes stay on Kurt for a couple of seconds more before she looks back to him, eyes soft and entirely too knowing for Sebastian’s peace of mind.

She shrugs, and sits on the couch armrest. 

“We wanted to surprise you.” Her lips purse into a playful pout. “I hoped for a warmer welcome than this.”

“You know I’m happy to see you,” he says, reaching a hand to grab hers. 

It would’ve embarrassed a younger version of himself, the earnestness in his voice, but in light of— in light of everything that’s been going on lately, it’s the easiest thing in the world, to tell that younger version of himself to give it a rest. 

His mom’s playfulness melts into an expression so loving that Sebastian feels like he’s five again, showing her an ugly, sticky macaroni portrait with a golden star. 

“I know, kiddo. I’m just exercising my God given right to rib you a little while I can.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes, but he squeezes her hand in his.

“Where is mémé Jacqueline?” 

His mom smiles, rolls her eyes in return.

“Back at the hotel, she said the flight tired her out. I personally think she just wanted a little alone time to play around with her online farming games.”

Sebastian snorts.

His mom clears her throat then and directs her gaze back to the armchair (back to _Kurt_ ), and he’s sure he knows what is coming before the words even make it out, so he braces himself for an onslaught of questions.

His mom, however, just says, with a sympathetic grimace in place,“That’s probably hell on his back.” 

His gaze is drawn back to Kurt, and he can feel the way his whole face softens, how his lips stretch in an affectionate lopsided smile; Kurt’s tilted slightly to the right, cheek half-smushed against the armchair and his own shoulder. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, a little sloppy. 

God knows how long he stayed up, playing nurse for him over a light fever, when he probably has more important stuff to do. 

Better stuff to do.

“Should we wake him up?” His mom asks, still quiet. Still knowing. 

He shakes his head, says, “I don’t think he got much sleep last night.”

His mom makes a vaguely amused noise, low in her throat, and Sebastian’s ears burn. 

“We should make him some breakfast,” she says, after Sebastian’s had enough time to stew in the awkwardness of his own careless wording, standing up and smoothing wrinkles in her pants. “Judging by the state of your kitchen, someone might’ve actually _cooked_ in there sometime this century.”

Sebastian watches her make her way to the kitchen, and after throwing a last glance towards a still sleeping Kurt, gets up as quietly as he can manage, and follows her.

“Before you get your hopes up, it wasn’t me.”

 

Sebastian’s almost done making french toast as his mom slices fruit for a fruit salad—both of them side by side, humming top 40 songs that his mom likes to pretend she knows the lyrics to—, when Kurt finds them. 

He realizes he’s there by the small, startled sound he makes. 

When he cranes his neck to look at him, he’s standing near the kitchen island, eyes wide and lips parted. 

His mom turns around a couple of seconds later, finishing up on slicing an apple first. 

Kurt’s eyes get even wider, if possible, and if they were alone Sebastian would burst out laughing at the image he makes, petrified at the sight of a woman that’s maybe 5’2” when not wearing pumps (which is anytime she’s not at work).

That’s when Kurt blurts out, “I thought you’d be taller.”

And then he goes beet red, up to the roots of his (sleep rumpled, soft looking) hair and he slaps a hand over his mouth, positively mortified. 

His mom bursts out laughing.

 

To his credit, Kurt keeps it together until his mom gets a call from a business associate and has to leave.

Once Noémie Smythe is out the door, though, Kurt crumbles like a house of cards. 

Sebastian’s not enough of a good person to not find the way he buries his face in his hands and lets a noise that is most certainly at least closely-related to a whine funny. He doesn’t think any amount of soul searching would make the sight anything other than a little hilarious.

And then Kurt nearly whimpers, “Oh God, she hates me.”

And Sebastian just breaks out in laughter.

It’s funny. It’s so— it’s hilarious, Kurt is so _worried_ and just— 

“She doesn’t _hate you_ ,” he says, because— it’s just ridiculous. Kurt is ridiculous.

Kurt’s _glaring_ at him.

“Sebastian, I made the worst first impression in the history of first impressions. I intruded on a tender moment of— of _bonding_ between mother and son, and the first thing I say to her is ‘I thought you’d be taller’. _Who says that?_ ”

Sebastian chuckles, grabs a leftover apple slice and chews on it while Kurt works himself into a frenzy.

When it gets a little too ridiculous, he rolls his eyes and flings a blueberry at Kurt, which succeeds in getting him to stop looking as though the world’s coming to an untimely end— by making him glare at Sebastian again. 

It’d be intimidating if Kurt’s hair wasn’t sticking up in about a hundred different directions.

… And if Sebastian didn’t know he’d probably spent the whole night being his own personal Florence Nightingale.

It’s that reminder that makes Sebastian want to reassure Kurt.

“Are you kidding me?” He starts, attempting to be gentle, and probably landing only somewhere in the vicinity. “You couldn’t have made a better impression if you tried. You were caring for her _ailing son_. And, Kurt, this might come as a shock to you but: she knows she’s short. It’s not news. Her husband is 6’2”. She’s heard it all. If anything, you scored some points by being upfront. She likes that in people.”

Kurt frowns for a second or two after he’s done speaking, as if assessing Sebastian’s points. Finally, he sighs, and the panic’s gone, leaving behind hunched shoulders and tired eyes underscored by faint dark circles. 

Sebastian feels a brief stab of guilt.

"I just don’t want her to hate me,” Kurt admits then, a lot calmer, but also a lot more genuine, and when his clear, honest eyes meet Sebastian’s, his heart clenches.

_Why does it even matter?_ He wants to ask. _What does it even matter to you if my mom hates you?_

The questions weigh on his tongue, and he thrums with the energy of them, and he’s honestly just— ready to blurt them out, and get this whole thing over with, when Kurt’s phone starts ringing, in his breast pocket.

“Crap,” Kurt hisses, as he takes the call. 

Sebastian watches him as he has a rapid-fire conversation with whoever’s on the other end of the line that’s less words and more half-formed syllables and noises, face going from worried one second to annoyed the next, back to worried, then to dazzlingly happy, then to thoughtful, over and over again, until he’s telling this person “I’ll be there in an hour” and hanging up.

Kurt winces at him as he pockets his phone, says, “I have to go.”

Sebastian hums, picks up another apple slice.

“That sounded—” He waves the little slice around, for effect. “Interesting.”

Kurt’s cheeks go slightly pink.

“It’s my assistant director, Shane.”

“Assistant director?” He bites into the slice, and chases a drop of stray juice on his bottom lip with his tongue.

Kurt’s eyes drop to his lips, and Sebastian’s stomach flutters with something that might be hope, but the moment’s fleeting, barely a second and gone, before Kurt’s eyes are back on his.

“I’m directing a play with the Lexington Home for Retired Performers, for my Work Study Program. NYADA’s way of encouraging us to get out of the nest, so to speak.”

_Of course_. Of course Kurt would choose a retirement home, because that’s— that’s the kind of thing a guy like him—a genuinely good one, a guy who gives people second and third chances, a guy who brings ill _acquaintances_ homemade chicken noodle soup— does. 

Sebastian’s not that kind of guy. He doesn’t know how to be that kind of guy. Fuck, sometimes he has trouble not being an actively awful guy, sometimes it takes all the goodness in him to not lash out at someone who’s unwittingly wasting his time. 

“Actually.” Kurt’s standing next to his stool, looking slightly abashed. “That’s the reason I called yesterday. Our play opens this Sunday, and I was wondering if you would want to come. Along with your mother and grandmother, of course.”

The invitation stops him in his tracks, hand holding a blueberry halfway to his mouth.

Kurt flushes, but holds his gaze, even as his hands reach for a cloth napkin to fiddle with.

Kurt’s _nervous_. Kurt’s— 

He drops the blueberry back into the bowl with the remnants of Kurt’s fruit salad, and reaches out a hand towards Kurt’s. He stops at the last second, and grabs a corner of the napkin Kurt’s holding onto, instead, and Kurt’s gaze drops to their hands, almost touching but not quite, only a folded square of fabric between them. 

“Kurt, I—”

Kurt’s phone rings again, and Kurt’s startled into dropping the napkin.

He grabs his phone from his pocket again and winces when he sees the screen.

“I need to go,” Kurt tells him, and there’s a hint of softness to his voice that makes Sebastian want to try to convince him to stay. The way Kurt’s eyes dip to Sebastian’s hand, now a loose fist around the napkin, tells him that maybe Kurt would listen.

It takes every last single scrap of decency he owns to say, instead, “I’ll go. To your play.”

Kurt _beams_ , and Sebastian knows he made the right choice.


	11. Chapter 11

“So I hear from Mimi that we are going to see a play tomorrow. Your sweetheart seems like quite the thespian.” 

Mémé Jacqueline looks inordinately pleased about this. 

In fact, mémé Jacqueline’s been acting inordinately pleased about Kurt in general. It’s practically all she’s wanted to talk about for the past fifteen minutes they’ve been waiting for their entrées, and even Sebastian’s refusal to impart gossip about his fake boyfriend so far has done nothing to kill the pleased glimmer in her eyes whenever she brings him up.

“He is,” he replies, giving her a smile, and reaching for his glass of wine. “I don’t think we’ll get to see him on stage this Sunday, though.”

“Pity,” she says, and as she straightens the cutlery in front of her, she adds, “it would’ve been lovely to hear that singing voice of his in person.”

Sebastian frowns at her.

“When have you heard him sing?”

Mémé Jacqueline looks up from the now perfectly arranged cutlery and smiles at him devilishly. 

“My boy, even an old woman like me knows how to work a search engine nowadays.” She leans her forearms on the table and interlaces her fingers, leaning forwards conspiratorially. “He’s very cute.”

“He is,” he can’t help but agree, finger tracing the rim of his wine glass. 

“And smart,” she adds, index finger escaping the tangle of her hands to point at him. “Very smart. Chip off the old block, that one. A smart, hard working, handsome man with solid ethics.”

“Do you want his phone number, mémé?” He drawls, smirking at her.

She throws her head back and laughs, heartily. The other patrons look at them, vaguely scandalized, and Sebastian feels a surge of intense affection for the woman sitting in front of him, for all the ways she’s taught him by example to be himself. 

“If only I were a man your age,” she replies once she’s gotten her fit of laughter under control, throwing in a wink for good measure.

Their waitress comes bearing their entrées then, and for a while mémé Jacqueline is busy exchanging pleasantries with her—she refers to her by her name, Denise, because she says it’s only polite, and inquires about her day— as she sets their plates in front of them, and when she walks away they both spend a couple of minutes eating in silence. 

After she’s cleared about a fourth of her meal, mémé Jacqueline rests fork and knife on her plate and grabs for her glass of water.

She takes a sip and leaves the glass within reach, holding it in a loose fist and running the middle finger of her other hand along the rim, over and over.

Sebastian’s seen her doing this before, in dinners and lunches and benefits, when she’s carefully considering her words. 

“I’m happy for you, my boy,” she says, finally. “And I’m proud of you.”

He only realizes his hand has stopped mid motion when mémé Jacqueline puts a hand over his raised arm, his fork held in a tight fist. 

He relaxes his hold, takes the bite, chews slowly. 

He can’t taste the veal. 

He leaves his cutlery in a resting position, unthinking, the motions ingrained in him.

“I worry that I haven’t said it enough,” she goes on, gentle. “I worry that none of us have.”

“Mémé—”

“You are turning into a fine man, Sebastian, a _good_ man.” Her hand squeezes his upper arm. “And it makes me so indescribably happy to see you’re finally learning to forgive yourself for your past mistakes, letting yourself move on.”

Sebastian’s throat closes up, and he feels a heat coursing through him that has nothing to do with getting food inside him, or the half-empty glass of wine to his right. 

“I—” He stops, not really knowing what he wants to say exactly. Not even knowing whether he could say anything that popped up in his mind, with the way his throat seems to be closing up, tighter, tighter.

Mémé Jacqueline’s hand squeezes again.

“We love you, Bastien, all of us old people in your life. Mimi, your dad, me.”

“I love you too,” he manages to croak out. He clears his throat, and adds, “All of you. I’m sorry that— I’m sorry that I don’t say that more often.” 

Mémé Jacqueline clucks her tongue, playful, and says, “Have yet to meet a young man who says that often enough to his family.”

Sebastian thinks back to Kurt, smiling fondly at an ugly pair of flannel pajamas. 

“He’s lucky to have you, your young man,” mémé Jacqueline tells him then, as if she could read right into his thoughts. 

_It’s all a lie_ , he wants to say, but the words stick in his throat. 

Instead, what comes out—in a strangled voice that Sebastian hardly recognizes as his own— is, “I’m in love with him.”

“I know,” she says, and there’s no end to the gentleness in her eyes and her smile. “You have this glow about you. The glow of a youngster in love.” She pauses, wrinkles her nose. “Very annoying.”

He chuckles, and she gives him a pleased smile.

“If your sweetheart is as smart as he seems,” she says, as she places her glass of water back beside her wine glass, “then I have no doubt that he’s glowing too.”

And Sebastian— Sebastian thinks back to the day before, the way Kurt had lit up when Sebastian had accepted his invitation, and he lets himself hope.

 

Sunday comes with jitters and his mom trying to get him into a suit as mémé Jacqueline ignores them both as she scrolls through her Facebook feed on her phone, adjusting her reading glasses now and then, liking pictures of the family babies, huffing quietly at funny status updates and clucking her tongue at the obnoxious ones.

“It’s not a gala, mother,” he complains, as his mom keeps thrusting the hanger with the suit bag at him.

“Sebastian, it’s his _opening night_.” 

“And we are going to be late if you two don’t stop your quarrelling,” mémé Jacqueline drawls from the couch, fingers still busy on her screen. “You have been at this for ten minutes. Mimi, let the boy wear whatever he wants, he’s the one dating his young man.”

His mom rolls her eyes and gives up, setting the suit bag over the couch backrest.

“Fine, then. Let’s go.”

 

On the way to the retirement home Sebastian asks their town car driver to make a stop at a flower shop, and he avoids his mom’s knowing, pleased gaze for the rest of the trip, holding onto his bouquet of red long-stemmed roses with his ears burning and his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest.

 

He reads his program’s title again, a little unsure of having parsed it right the first time around.

The text, however, remains unchanged, printed on an appropriately psychedelic type font on cheerily glossy paper. 

_Lexington Home for Retired Performers presents Hair_.

Mémé Jacqueline, at his left, lets out a low whistle as she looks at her own program.

“You have an ambitious young man for a boyfriend.”

“So it seems,” he says, smiling affectionately at his program and feeling a little ridiculous for it.

His mom, at his right, shushes them both as the lights go off.

 

“You did a great job. Congratulations,” he says as he approaches Kurt after the curtain call, bouquet of red roses clutched tightly in front of him like some kind of shield.

Kurt, a little teary-eyed as he stands by the sidelines, holding what might be a rolled-up, torn and tattered copy of a script with both hands, watching his cast members with their families, startles a little.

When he catches sight of him, his face transforms into a pleased smile that freezes when he notices the flowers.

Sebastian’s hands start sweating, and he has to swallow a couple of times before he can say, with a casual tone that reflects a lot more calm than he honestly has in him at the moment, “Thought I’d see your bandmates here.”

Kurt’s eyes don’t stray from the flowers, even as he says, “Dani changed shifts with me at work today so I could be here, and Elliott had a family thing that he couldn’t get out of.”

Eventually, he looks up from the bouquet, cheeks flushed pink, and he opens his mouth to say something, only to close it back again and bite his lower lip. 

“Your mother and grandmother?” He asks, instead, when the silence’s gotten a little too heavy between them.

Sebastian points in some vague direction behind himself with a thumb, says, “They’re talking to your Sheila. Grand-mère is a fan.”

“Maggie.” Kurt’s eyes seek something over Sebastian’s shoulder, and when he finds it a warm smile takes over his face for a couple of seconds. Then he locks gazes with Sebastian and adds, with lips twisted into a lopsided smile, “Your grandmother has good taste. It’s hard to see the family resemblance.”

Just like that, the tension is gone, and it’s just them again, on familiar ground, doing what they do best.

“Well, I don’t know,” he says, “after googling the guy I’m dating, she seems to think I have great taste.” He pauses, then adds, “Granted, she thinks he has great taste too, but she can be forgiven for that because she hasn’t seen his wardrobe.”

Kurt hits him on the arm with the rolled-up maybe-script, but the lopsided smile stays on his face, even as the bouquet rustles with the motion, and his eyes are drawn back to it.

“Are those—”

“For your assistant director, obviously,” Sebastian says, smirking, and when Kurt rolls his eyes, he finally offers him the bouquet. “Congratulations. Again.”

Kurt flushes again, bright pink, as he accepts the flowers, and lifts them up to bury his nose in them.

“Roses,” he comments, gazing at him from under his lashes, and there’s something coy in it, in the way a budding smile hides behind the bouquet. “Bold.”

“For a bold man.” He can hear the flirty undertone to his own words, and the tips of his ears burn again. 

Kurt hums, lowering his hands and tracing a finger over the delicate petals of one of the roses, and then he says, “Prussian blue.”

Sebastian frowns, confused.

Kurt bites his lip, and his gaze flickers downwards before it’s back up again, locking with his. 

The coyness is gone, and there’s only what Sebastian recognizes as vulnerability— in the way Kurt cradles the bouquet, in the way he stands, in the splotches of red riding high on his cheeks, in his eyes, bright, brave.

Kurt takes a deep breath in, and says, a little shaky, “Prussian blue, that’s my favorite color.”

And suddenly, all Sebastian wants to do is kiss him. And the way Kurt’s looking back, eyes alight with something Sebastian might be starting to recognize, tells him that Kurt might want that to too.

And so he does. He surges forward, cupping Kurt’s face between slightly clammy palms and _kisses_ him. Kisses him the way they haven’t kissed before, a little too hard, a little too dry, noses bumping, but God, it’s exactly what Sebastian wants. And judging by the way Kurt sighs and parts his lips, it might be exactly what _he_ wants too.

From behind them, he can hear mémé Jacqueline wolf whistling, and he laughs into the kiss, and Kurt follows.

“I like her already,” Kurt says, breathy, once they part, foreheads touching.

Sebastian chuckles.

“She thinks your dad is hot,” he says, just to see Kurt’s reaction.

Kurt doesn’t disappoint, nose wrinkling.

“Why would you say that?” He asks, taking a step back. Sebastian’s tempted to pull him back in, to just have him to himself in a little bubble of just them for a while longer, but Kurt holds out a hand to him, looking expectant, and Sebastian takes it, intertwining their fingers.

He shrugs, and squeezes Kurt’s hand, just because he can.

“I want you to know what you’re getting into.”

Kurt rolls his eyes, but his eyes soften almost immediately, and he squeezes Sebastian’s hand back, before saying, almost in a whisper, “I know.”

Before Sebastian can react to that, Kurt’s tugging at his hand, pulling him back into the throng of cast members and families and other lingering assorted members of the community, acting for all the world as if that’s just how things are supposed to be, just that easy.

And maybe, just maybe, they are.

**Author's Note:**

> [ Come hang out with me on tumblr! ](http://memekon.tumblr.com)


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